What's in the September issue of Wired magazine

The new September issue of Wired is now in the shops (subscribers have been receiving their issues since last Monday). Here's a quick guide to what you can look forward to.

Over the course of the next month, we'll put a number of these pieces on the website -- but many of these pieces are print only. To receive the magazine each month at £2, rather than the £3.99 cover price in the UK, join us as a subscriber.

It's our first annual "How To" issue -- a tradition that's been going for a while in the US, where past celebrity covers have include Martha Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Julia Allison. We've tapped into our favourite comedy TV series, BBC2's The Thick of It, with star cover performances from Malcolm Tucker and Ollie Reeder (played by Peter Capaldi and Chris Addison) surrounded by some disconcertingly fluorescent inks (well, it's the Wired heritage, so think of it as self-mockery).

The cover story, over 12 pages, includes some gems from Malcolm Tucker -- such as how to insult with style ("You're about as secure as a hymen in a south London comprehensive") -- but also some rather more practical skills. Chris Anderson, editor of our US edition, writes a terrific introduction to building your own UAV -- and then navigating it using GPS waypoints and Google Maps. Ajaz Ahmed of AKQA explains how to make money from the iPad, Marc Salem shows how to read someone's mind (or appear to do so), and Robert Cialdini and Steve Martin reveal how the government can wield powerful tools of social persuasion to save the economy while enhancing the nation's eco-credentials.

Plus: How to get headhunted; get VC funding; write an e-book bestseller; create new life; get in the zone; control the agenda in a meeting;hack cheap air fares; build your own supercar from just £5,000; join the singularity; use charm to get ahead; track your entire life; and survive a new regime. Although the latter is advice from Malcolm Tucker, so we can't accept responsibility if you take up his advice.

We have a long and beautifully illustrated feature on how the new "open data" movement is freeing up raw data to create powerful visual tools -- and thus turning data into information. With the visual help of Chris Osborne and his team at ITO, James Silver explains how Open Street Map saved lives after the Haiti earthquake, how FlightRadar24.com and RadarVirtuel.com clarified aircraft movements in real time during the ash-cloud crisis this spring, and how London's Data Store is helping the capital's commuters make better-informed decisions.

This is an important trend towards opening up useful data, but not every public body is doing the right thing. As I write in my editor's letter: "Give developers access to live data feeds, and they will build beautiful, useful and unforeseen tools that benefit us all… Still, some dinosaurs flatly refuse to serve the public good. Chief among them is National Rail Enquiries, owned by the Association of Train Operating Companies, which continues to reject calls to open up its feeds -- despite collecting huge taxpayer subsidies. When I asked why, a press officer said "it just isn’t practical to make [services] entirely open to developers" as data was constantly being updated and the system would face "extra strain". Nonsense: it’s simply an excuse to maximise revenues by charging for data that should be freely available. In response, our new 'open' prime minister should threaten to withdraw public subsidy. We’re going to campaign more on this. Sign up at editorial@wired.co.uk."

Other features include Duncan Graham-Rowe on the new retinal implant that is restoring a degree of sight to previously blind people -- with great photographs from Spencer Lowell, and a startling opening spread, which visually shows what Wired would look like to a patient fitted with such an implant. Adam Higginbotham reports on how the US military is fighting back against the IED bombs taking lives daily in Afghanistan and Iraq. Jonah Lehrer explores the search for a cure to stress. And we have eight beautiful pages featuring the tiniest images of pollen from the studio of Martin Oeggerli -- a reminder of the power of high-production-value analogue magazine pages in a digital age.

Highlights of the Play section: * Bompass and Parr's jelly delicacies * Edgar Wright on the Scott Pilgrim movie * An outbreak of zombie literature * Music that's created from brainwaves * The Chinese skyscraper with 600 data-dripping sensors

And in Fetish and Test: * A bicycle based on a luxury car * Hydrogen-powered cars you can build and race * Stunning low-energy lighting * Electric water scooters, smartphones and high-pressure water jets tested